There were no police or civilian casualties, according to the report by Xinjiang’s government-run Tianshan news site.

Xinjiang is home to China’s nine-million-strong Turkic-speaking and mostly Muslim ethnic minority.

Monday’s clash was triggered when residents of Shule county, near the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar, noticed “a suspicious person carrying an explosive device”, Tianshan said.

They called police, who opened fire after the attacker tried to attack an officer with an axe and detonate the device, according to the report.

The assailant was killed, but soon afterwards five more attackers “sought to ignite explosive devices one after the other”, Tianshan said.

The five were “resolutely” shot dead by police, it added.

China’s ruling Communist Party tightly restricts access to the restive region, and information is difficult to independently verify.

Violence linked to Xinjiang has intensified over the past year, with at least 200 people killed in a series of clashes and increasingly sophisticated attacks in the resource-rich region and beyond it.

Beijing, which blames Xinjiang-related violence on “religious extremists”, “separatists” and “terrorists”, has responded by launching a severe crackdown in recent months, with hundreds of arrests and around 50 executions and death sentences publicly announced since June.

Rights groups argue that harsh police treatment of the Uighur minority, as well as government campaigns against religious practices such as the wearing of veils, have led to violence.

China denies repression, saying it has brought badly needed modernisation and economic development to the vast and landlocked region bordering Central Asia.

In December a court in the regional capital of Urumqi condemned eight people to death for two deadly attacks, one on the city’s main train station and another on a market there. (AFP)